INSECTS. 
conversant in this part of Natural History can be 
supposed to have studied these authors; and to 
such it should seem highly necessary to give at 
least some abridged description of the particulars 
most worthy of attention which have been dis- 
covered by those who have written professedly on 
the subject. 
It must be absolutely unnecessary in the present 
enlightened days of science to say any thing rela- 
tive to the ancient idea of what was termed the 
equivocal production of Insects, and their sup- 
posed or pretended origin from putrefaction. One 
single experiment of Redi, a celebrated physi- 
cian and philosophic observer in the seventeenth 
century, must be fully sufficient to prove the ab- 
surdity of the doctrine entertained by the ancients^ 
Let some animal flesh, for instance, be placed in 
an open vessel, and exposed to the air for some 
days; and let another vessel with the same kind 
of flesh in it be also placed with it, but instead of 
being exposed to the air, let it be covered with a 
piece of silk or fine gauze, tied over it. The con- 
sequence will be, that the flesh in the open vessel 
will in a short time abound with the larvce or 
maggots of flies, which have deposited their eggs 
on the meat; but, on opening the covered vessel, 
not the least appearance of such beings \Vill be 
found, though the flesh be in the same state of 
putrefaction with the other. I know not that the 
truth of this experiment has ever been called in 
question; but if it has, it must have been owing 
to the experiment not having been properly con- 
